27 November 2007

In an interview with the BBC, Nigeria's education minister questioned the need for laptops in poorly equipped schools.

Dr Igwe Aja-Nwachuku said: "What is the essence of introducing One Laptop per Child when they don't have seats to sit down and learn; when they don't have uniforms to go to school in, where they don't have facilities?"

"We are more interested in laying a very solid foundation for quality education which will be efficient, effective, accessible and affordable."

The previous government of Nigeria had committed to buying one million laptops.

Dr Aja-Nwachuku said he was now assessing OLPC alongside other schemes from Microsoft and Intel.

[...]

Professor Bender said there was still an "aggressive" effort to undermine the charity.

"There is still a concerted misinformation campaign out there," he said.

Mr Bender said he would not speculate on who was behind the alleged campaign.

25 November 2007

lib•er•tar•iann. 1. a person who believes in the doctrine of the freedom of the will2. a person who believes in full individual freedom of thought, expression and action3. a freewheeling rebel who hates wiretaps, loves Ron Paul and is redirecting politics

[...]

When a fierce Republican foe of the wars on drugs and terrorism is able, without really trying, to pull in a record haul of campaign cash on a day dedicated to an attempted regicide, it's clear that a new and potentially transformative force is growing in American politics.

That force is less about [Ron] Paul than about the movement that has erupted around him -- and the much larger subset of Americans who are increasingly disillusioned with the two major political parties' soft consensus on making government ever more intrusive at all levels, whether it's listening to phone calls without a warrant, imposing fines of half a million dollars for broadcast "obscenities" or jailing grandmothers for buying prescribed marijuana from legal dispensaries.

[...]

...Paul's success has mostly left the mainstream media and pundits flustered, if not openly hostile. The Associated Press recently treated the Paul phenomenon like an alien life form: "The Texas libertarian's rise in the polls and in fundraising proves that a small but passionate number of Americans can be drawn to an advocate of unorthodox proposals." Republican pollster Frank Luntz has denounced Paul's supporters as "the equivalent of crabgrass . . . not the grass you want, and it spreads faster than the real stuff." And conservative syndicated columnist Mona Charen said out loud what many campaign reporters have no doubt been thinking all along: "He might make a dandy new leader for the Branch Davidians."

When conservatives feel comfortable mocking the victims gunned down by Clinton-era attorney general Janet Reno's FBI in Waco, Tex., in 1993, it suggests that a complacent and increasingly authoritarian establishment feels threatened.

I wouldn't necessarily take advice from Lawrence Summers on matters of gender politics in academia, but the man's still one of the smartest economists on the planet.

And he thinks we're in a heap of trouble:

Three months ago it was reasonable to expect that the subprime credit crisis would be a financially significant event but not one that would threaten the overall pattern of economic growth. This is still a possible outcome but no longer the preponderant probability.

Even if necessary changes in policy are implemented, the odds now favour a US recession that slows growth significantly on a global basis. Without stronger policy responses than have been observed to date, moreover, there is the risk that the adverse impacts will be felt for the rest of this decade and beyond.

"...and then it's moved onto Wall Street, and it's rather extraordinary what happens then, and somehow, this package of dodgy debt stops being a package of dodgy debt and starts being what we call a Structured Investment Vehicle..."

John Fortune and John Bird, "The Long Johns," explain the subprime mortgage crisis on the South Bank show.

The conceit is that an expert, "George Parr," played interchangeably by either Mr. Bird or Mr. Fortune, is interviewed by an erudite chat show host played by whoever isn't playing George Parr. (Clear?)

“A man who might have died quietly in his bed of AIDS,” said Mr. Piot, “now faces the terrifying specter of watching his neighbors slip from their rooftops one-by-one, screaming until the rising deep muffles their voices, knowing that he faces the inevitable moment when his fingers slip from the chimney, the brine subdues his own shrieks and the sea becomes his tomb.”

Mr. Piot denied accusations that he makes alarmist statements to serve a political and fundraising agenda rather than following rigorous scientific processes.

“My alarmist statements have resulted in billions of dollars in funding for research,” Mr. Piot said. “I’m making sure scientists get paid. What could be more scientific than that?”

22 November 2007

It is Thanksgiving Day, the one day of the year when you’re expected to be grateful.

But according to an army of psychologists, writers and talk show hosts like Oprah, giving thanks only today is a lost opportunity. You should be grateful all the time, they say, and one of the best ways is in writing — by keeping a “gratitude journal.”

Television programs, books, radio shows and Web sites point to research that shows that keeping a list of things you’re thankful for can make you happier.

Tyler Cowen of George Mason University (for those of you keeping score at home, a libertarian-conservative economist teaching at a conservative school), writing in the Washington Post:

...Iraq hawks argued that, in a post-9/11 world, we needed to take out rogue regimes lest they give nuclear or biological weapons to al-Qaeda-linked terrorist groups. But each time the United States tries to do so and fails to restore order, it incurs a high -- albeit unseen -- opportunity cost in the future. Falling short makes it harder to take out, threaten or pressure a dangerous regime next time around.

Foreign governments, of course, drew the obvious lesson from our debacle -- and from our choice of target. The United States invaded hapless Iraq, not nuclear-armed North Korea. To the real rogues, the fall of Baghdad was proof positive that it's more important than ever to acquire nuclear weapons -- and if the last superpower is bogged down in Iraq while its foes slink toward getting the bomb, so much the better. Iran, among others, has taken this lesson to heart. The ironic legacy of the war to end all proliferation will be more proliferation.

The bottom line is clear, Mr. President: The more you worried about the unchecked spread of doomsday weapons, the stronger you thought the case was for war in the first place. But precisely because you had a point about the need to stop nuclear proliferation, you must now realize that the costs of a failed war are far higher than you've acknowledged.

Ironically, it's probably the doves who should lower their mental estimate of the war's long-haul cost: By fighting a botched war today, the United States has lowered the chance that it will fight another preventive war in the near future. The American public simply does not have the stomach for fighting a costly, potentially futile war every few years...

Man, you just don't see lairs getting built like that any more. Used to be, the first thing a rich guy did after making a pile of cash was succumb to Turrets Syndrome (sorry) and build himself a castle.

If I ever achieve my goal of becoming a wildly powerful and fabulously rich mad genius, I am *so* building me a lair, unless there are some pre-existing lairs on the market with nice features.

Random notes from a ridiculously productive but very pleasant weekend:

Got the Christmas shopping done. As in, completely. Carrie and I feel very smug about that, thanks.

Got a few hours of work put in for the office. Mostly just organizing what has to be accomplished in the next three weeks... I have become a big booster of outlines, lists, and flowcharts, which help me get myself (and others) organized way more than any project management software I've ever used.

Took some leftover brisket and a sack of pinto beans and some Pomi tomatoes and so forth and cooked up a big pot of chili, to be portioned out and frozen. Love the thriftiness of cooking with leftovers, but what we really love is the quick, effortless home-cooked midweek meal that just needs thawing and heating.

Restaurant notes: Carrie and I had the six-course tasting menu at Fleur de Sel last night, with wine pairings, including (with the cheese course) an aggressively spicy Gewürztraminer that, happily, I will *not* have to go to the ends of the earth to track down... the very fine and friendly Moore Bros. Wine Shop near our neighborhood knows all.

And tonight, I'm meeting some old friends from the dotcom days for dinner at a favorite tapas place. Unlike the old days, there won't be an expense account to cover our bill... but even if we are paying for meals ourselves these days, we are also older and wiser... much.

I hope.

Finally, it's time to put an old workhorse out to pasture... our Compaq PC, which has done yeoman's service as our main home machine for four years now, has been boot-and-nuked and reinstalled with Ubuntu Linux.

It is soon to find a good home somewhere as a perfectly serviceable Internet machine.

And later this morning, I'm off to pick up one of these to replace it, adhering to my earlier pledge to eschew all things Vista and replace all the home PCs with Macs as they aged out of usefulness.

17 November 2007

By day, Jennifer Donovan works as an astronomer, listening for the faintest whispers from atoms in deep outer space, the tracings of movement in galaxies millions of light-years from Earth.

But it is nighttime.

And in an abandoned cigar factory on a deserted street in Astoria, Queens, Jennifer Donovan, the astronomer, has become Luna Impact, roller derby chick.

She hurtles down the floor, a blur of pursuit behind Hyper Lynx, a skater who has twice blocked her so hard that she flew out of bounds.

Now, Luna Impact — 125 muscular pounds packed into the lithe frame of Ms. Donovan — has a ferocious derby face on. As she passes Hyper, she drops into a crouch and shifts lanes directly in front of her. Then she abruptly uncoils, standing up and bashing into Hyper’s helmet.

I seen a girl on a one way corridorstealing down a wrong way streetfor all the world like an urban toreadorshe had wheels on... on her feetwell the cars do the usual dancessame old cruise and the kerbside crawlbut the rollergirl she's taking chancesthey just love to see her take them all

Adding in the $29,954.82 in non-team donations--processed through Valour-IT's regular donation page--swells the preliminary total to $168,370.91!!

As the totals lagged this year, I scaled back my hopes to at least break $100,000. But it sounds like I was too low by half--last year we raised nearly $30,000 dollars in donations by check, so with similar results this year we can hope to break $200,000.

OUR BELIEFS: We are artists. We may not dress all cool like artists, or get chicks like artists, and none of us are starving, quite obviously, but Hollywood screenwriters are certainly artists, perhaps even artistes, and we suffer just the same. Not in a showy, oh-I-live-in-a-tenement and-turn-tricks-to-buy-paint and have-this-special-tuberculosis-only-artists-get kind of way. We suffer as we slave over our screenplays alone, staring into blank laptops, often blinded by pool glare. And we smoke real cigarettes.

[...]

We are not cogs in some machine. While many of today’s blockbusters are written by that machine, we are not cogs in it, despite having originally written all the dialogue and characters and plot that this machine endlessly recombines and maximizes. When a bitter cop with a shattered family and a monkey on his back flees a narco-terrorist’s fireball while cracking that he’s getting too old for this, some writer wrote some parts of that, some time back.

11 November 2007

As I sit down to write, it's the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month here in the Eastern Standard time zone... the 89th anniversary of the armistice signed between the Allies and Germany in 1918, effectively ending World War I.

"Armistice Day," of course, became "Veteran's Day" (which we'll observe officially tomorrow) after World War II.

If you've given this year, please allow me to express my appreciation and thanks, on behalf of the wounded Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines who will receive laptops fitted with adaptive gear.

If you haven't given this year - for whatever reason - and it is within your ability to do so, would you please consider the most generous gift you can afford, and click "Make a Donation" in the upper right-hand corner of this blog?

10 November 2007

We focus our efforts towards promoting the importance of emergency preparation awareness and working with local communities around the globe to teach them what is needed to survive whatever crisis may come along like natural disasters or man made disasters.

Our mission is to make sure you are prepared for any crisis situation that might come along in your daily life which may include your home being invaded by the undead menace.

Zombie Squad also supports other local and international disaster relief organizations/charities. Check out our events page for the latest charity event we have coming up.

Q: Do you really think Zombies are real or is this some sort of zombie movie fan site?

A: Zombie Squad realizes that it is quite possible for someone to live their entire lives without encountering the undead nuisance. However, we hold fast to the belief that if you are prepared for a scenario where the walking corpses of your family and neighbors are trying to eat you alive, you will be prepared for almost anything.

"What are the facts? Again and again and again - what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what 'the stars foretell,' avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable 'verdict of history' - what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your only clue. Get the facts!"

09 November 2007

Save the Deli is a space dedicated to the preservation of the Jewish delicatessen, a hallowed temple of salted and cured meats. The past half century has seen the deli’s numbers decline greatly, in New York, across the USA, in Canada, and Europe. Those that remain are endangered and in need of our support. Though the challenge is arduous, and the deli’s foes are many, we will persevere.

You know, a friend of mine predicted this very thing (in conversation, not a blog post) quite a few months ago and I absolutely didn't buy it:

With less than two months until Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses, there are signs that Mr. Huckabee, a former Baptist pastor for whom Bible verses flow easily off the tongue, is charming, quipping and sermonizing his way from a long shot ensconced in the second tier of the Republican presidential sweepstakes to a possible contender...

The November 10 issue of the British magazine New Scientist calls attention to the prevarications of anti-tobacco activists pushing ever-more-stringent smoking bans. A report and editorial highlight maverick anti-smoking activist Michael Siegel's debunking of claims that brief exposure to secondhand smoke has potentially deadly effects on the cardiovascular system. "It is certainly not correct to claim that a single 30-minute exposure to secondhand smoke causes hardening of the arteries, heart disease, heart attacks, or strokes," Siegel tells New Scientist. "The anti-smoking movement has gone overboard." The response from the prevaricators is telling:

"When you take the science and put it in the public domain you can't include all the caveats," says Stanton Glantz, a tobacco researcher at the University of California in San Francisco. "The messages have to be simplified so people can understand them."

Glantz is right, of course. If anti-smoking groups said regular exposure to secondhand smoke, continued for decades, might slightly increase your risk of heart disease (assuming that the weak associations found in epidemiological studies signify a causal relationship), that would be hard to understand. When they say the slightest whiff of secondhand smoke could kill you, that's easy to understand. The only problem is that it's not true.

Beginning today, Soldiers' Angels is offering the following gift to donors who give more than $25 to Valour-IT through the team competition. Donors must use a team button to receive a coin.

This military-style challenge coin is available marked for each of the team service branches (Soldier, Sailor, Airman, Marine). Donors will automatically receive the coin appropriate to their team donation.

07 November 2007

I recently received (and filled out) the “Ask America 2007 Nationwide Policy Survey,” and wished to amplify a few of the thoughts I expressed therein.

I’ve been a Republican all of my adult life. My parents were such true believers that they actually named me after Barry Goldwater. I’ve been politically active, donating money to, raising money for, and sometimes volunteering for Republican candidates at the local, state and Federal level.

I am a small-government conservative who is pro-business and pro-civil rights, the sort of person who used to form the backbone of the GOP.

And I don’t recognize what used to be my party any longer.

In 2006, after six years of relentless Bush administration incompetence, I had enough, and changed my party registration to “Independent.” (I certainly couldn’t bring myself to register as a Democrat, but just as clearly, I couldn’t remain a Republican.)

Six years of pervasive managerial ineptitude, calculated fiscal irresponsibility, egregious foreign policy ignorance, relentless demagoguery on unimportant issues, a blockheaded and idiotic denial of science that would do any Luddite proud, and a frightening and apparent disregard for civil rights at home and human rights abroad (as long as pandering excuses could be made under the imprimatur of “national security”)…

Enough.

As Alan Greenspan observed in his recent book, the Republican Party in recent years has traded principle for power, and as a result they now have—and deserve – neither.

So you might want to take me off your mailing list, as contacting me is just a waste of your money, and both your time and mine.

I’m not giving a dime, or lifting a finger, to help Republican candidates this year.

The ratings guide has teamed up with Wellpoint, one of the nation's largest health insurers, to allow consumers to rank doctors on a 30-point scale, just as diners rate restaurants.

Instead of assessing food, decor, service and cost, the free online tool, which will launch in March and be available eventually to Wellpoint's 35 million subscribers, will let people review their doctor visits based on trust, communication, availability and office environment. It also will feature a comment section where they can swap opinions.

05 November 2007

One afternoon in early September, an architect boarded his commuter train and became a cellphone vigilante. He sat down next to a 20-something woman who he said was “blabbing away” into her phone.

“She was using the word ‘like’ all the time. She sounded like a Valley Girl,” said the architect, Andrew, who declined to give his last name because what he did next was illegal.

Andrew reached into his shirt pocket and pushed a button on a black device the size of a cigarette pack. It sent out a powerful radio signal that cut off the chatterer’s cellphone transmission — and any others in a 30-foot radius.

“She kept talking into her phone for about 30 seconds before she realized there was no one listening on the other end,” he said. His reaction when he first discovered he could wield such power? “Oh, holy moly! Deliverance.”

As cellphone use has skyrocketed, making it hard to avoid hearing half a conversation in many public places, a small but growing band of rebels is turning to a blunt countermeasure: the cellphone jammer, a gadget that renders nearby mobile devices impotent.

04 November 2007

We've opened up a new front on the war on terror. It's an attack on the unique, the unorthodox, the unexpected; it's a war on different. If you act different, you might find yourself investigated, questioned, and even arrested -- even if you did nothing wrong, and had no intention of doing anything wrong. The problem is a combination of citizen informants and a CYA attitude among police that results in a knee-jerk escalation of reported threats.

This isn't the way counterterrorism is supposed to work, but it's happening everywhere. It's a result of our relentless campaign to convince ordinary citizens that they're the front line of terrorism defense. "If you see something, say something" is how the ads read in the New York City subways. "If you suspect something, report it" urges another ad campaign in Manchester, UK. The Michigan State Police have a seven-minute video. Administration officials from then-attorney general John Ashcroft to DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff to President Bush have asked us all to report any suspicious activity.

As Ken Burns' fascinating documentary on World War II recently reminded us, nothing teaches like early failures in a long war. So as this global struggle against radical extremism unfolds, it's important to recognize progress where it occurs.

In my 2004 book, "The Pentagon's New Map," I argued that our military would inevitably split into a Leviathan-like combat force and a "system administrator" force optimized for everything else: postwar stabilization and reconstruction, nation-building, crisis response, and counter-insurgency.

The sysadmin's capabilities emerge today in response to America's lengthy postwar stints in Afghanistan and Iraq. A good example would be the new Army-Marine counter-insurgency manual that argues for less "kinetics" ( i.e., blowing stuff up) and more effort in economic development and political capacity building. A long slog? You bet. But that's how our military finally overcomes the Vietnam syndrome.

Team Navy is currently in third place, but most importantly, all of the teams are far short of the individual $60,000 goals that were set after last year's success. (The fundraiser runs through next Sunday, and as with all fundraisers, most of the money comes in at the end.)

Enrevanche has several hundred regular readers (via RSS and direct visits) and a few thousand occasional droppers-by.

Perhaps you think that what you're able to give won't make a difference...

Well, if everyone who regularly reads enrevanche gave $5, we could buy at least a couple of new laptops for the troops all by ourselves.